Redneck Hillbilly Search

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Good Neighbour Gone Bad

  Thankfully there is a road separating us, since I cannot begin to imagine what else we'd be dealing with if we shared a fenceline.

  Burying a few hundred pounds of bones and waste trimmings from his beef farming operation 50 ft from our well wasn't quite enough for this fellow. We pissed him off and awakened the beast by calling the health authority who made him clean it up. Since then, he's driven his massive steel tracked machinery on the pavement repeatedly infront of our house, threatened that he'd come over and kick the Mr's ass if he was 20 yrs younger with a few dozen expletives,  and dropped a tree directly over a gas pipeline running through our properties.

The latest is the infected cattle he sold to our fenceline sharing neighbour.  He's known for "farming the farmer" - and he's farmed this newb alright.

We've only been cattle farming as hobbiests for 4 years now, and are learning as we go. Thankfully we haven't lost an animal yet. A few of them have had pnemonia and could have/should have died but they pulled through. We dealt with raging pinkeye infections last year that almost cost two animals their vision (thanks to above mentioned bad neighbour farmer). At the time he couldn't be bothered to warn us that he'd bought sick animals at the auction and that in no time at all it'd be on our little farm. He was kind enough to come help us doctor them up afterwards, I'll give him credit for that.

We aren't sure what these animals have - multiple crusty sores that almost look like warts all over their heads. Many of them crawling with the flies that will transfer the infection to our side.

Mange? Ringworm? Either of those would be devastating since they are both extremely contagious, can remain on a farm long after treatment and could even possibly infect humans or our dogs.

 Hard to "Love thy neighbour" these days. A shame all the way around.